


Concepts and Studies

by indigo_inkpot



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: I don't know what these are or what to call them, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-07 21:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20467754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_inkpot/pseuds/indigo_inkpot
Summary: This is a collection of headcanons, drabbles and other ideas that aren't enough to make a fic, but I feel like might be worth sharing anyway. Mostly for the Angst.





	1. So Many Words of Andrew learning to Give A Shit, and Neil getting a sweater

**Author's Note:**

> So I’ve been thinking about Andrew and wondering if Bee would tell him he needs a hobby outside of exy (and Neil, because no Andrew, he doesn’t count as a hobby)  
What if he took up knitting? It sounds weird, but knitting has been shown to reduce high heart rates/blood pressure and anxiety, and I think Andrew would like the idea of needles being dual purpose; he could always stab someone with them.

He straight-up gives up on the first three attempts, because he gets his tension wrong and there’s a hole and fuck this (Bee wants him to learn that sometimes perseverance directly results in nice things, to show him he can have pride in himself and not just do things because he can or has to).

So he watches a bunch of YouTube videos and mutes them all because tutorial makers can be cringey af.

He comes in one day and shows Bee a slightly wonky but passable black square (it’s more of a rectangle, but Bee finds some yellow ribbon and turns it into a mug cosy).

He’s been using shitty bamboo needles but Bee gifts him with a pair of metal ones, he definitely tucks them down his armbands.

Nicky gifts him a voucher for ravelry (the pattern website) so Andrew makes an account. Okay, _Neil_ makes it and gives Andrew the password.

Knitting takes forever, but Neil spots this sweater on Day 1; it’s got a cowl neck and cabling and it’s knitted with the thinnest yarn and tiniest fuckin needles Andrew’s ever seen. It’s way out of Andrew’s league.

So he starts small.

Neil gets a crop top for Christmas; Andrew learns how to increase and decrease and do ribbing.

Nicky gets a pair of wonky fingerless mitts; Andrew learns how to knit in the round.

Aaron gifts him a packet of weird bent needles; Andrew doesn’t think much of them until he’s looking up how to learn cable stitch (Aaron bought him exactly what he’d need)

When he graduates, Bee gifts him with a set of high quality interchangeable sharp steel needles in a sleek black case. After they moved in together, Andrew did his research, and called in a favour with Nicky.

Two months after they move in, Andrew gets a PO Box and the first delivery to it is high quality German merino yarn. In grey of course.

Nicky does break the terms of the favour and include some sweet little wooden buttons with foxes etched into them.

Renee gifted Andrew a project bag for graduation; a big canvas thing with a leather strap, it starts living in his car, he works on Neil’s sweater when he has spare time.

Andrew tells himself he’s not keeping it secret, he’s just keeping it free of fucking cat hair until Neil can at least try it on.

He doesn’t get it finished before Christmas, and it’s the first time he calls Bee in weeks, because he didn’t want to care and she gave him something to care about <strike>and Neil is someone he cares about</strike> and it’s frustrating, because it’s hard and he needs to focus and he still low-key sucks and screws up basics.

He started in October. Bee explains to him that most knitters start making gifts for Christmas in February. He’s not missed this Christmas, he’s just ahead of schedule for next year.

So it stays in his car for a year longer. December 23rd, he goes to meet Renee for coffee, she’s coming to stay with them for Christmas. She brings a sewing kit with her, and shows Andrew how to sew Nicky’s buttons onto the sweater. He’s finished with 36 hours to spare.

He sends a picture to Bee, of the sweater draped over his lap in his car. She congratulates him on finishing early.

Neil adores it, it’s the only item of clothing he dry cleans, after he wears it through the whole Christmas season. Andrew can’t work out for the life of him how it turned out baggy, until Bee asks him a week later how he felt about the blocking process.

Andrew had no idea he was supposed to block the sweater. Fortunately, Neil picks a very experienced dry cleaner, and the sweater comes back unscathed from its first wash. Neil adores it. He sleeps in it on Christmas Day, in a food coma on their living room floor.

He even buys a special box and lavender paper to store it in. (Eventually he’ll have half a dozen garments, and a special airtight plastic crate in the closet for them.)

* * *

Andrew takes a racquet to the helmet and can’t sit up without feeling dizzy for a week. So he learns to knit with his eyes shut. He’s unstoppable after he’s committed it to muscle memory. He makes them an afghan for Christmas.

Abby sent him a bunch of aran weight yarn so he learns how to knit with chunkier yarns, Neil buys him a crochet hook to pick up dropped stitches so he’ll stop grinding his teeth every time he loses a stitch.

Kevin starts to have problems with his hand (nerve damage, maybe, he's still stubborn about letting anyone except Abby look over his hand) and Andrew shows him how to knit after Neil reads up on it being good physical therapy. Kevin’s like an anxious little Chihuahua in the body of a Newfoundland, Andrew figures he could use the stress relief.

Kevin runs into all the same hurdles Andrew did, but he’s twice as vocal and three times as incompetent at it. Abby and Wymack get a selection of sofa pillows for their anniversary. It’s blatantly obvious which ones are Kevin’s and which are Andrew’s.

Andrew has a kind of panicked epiphany when he starts teaching Kevin. For a start, he has valuable information and a skill, and somebody wants to learn from him. Kevin sucks, but Andrew didn’t suck this much, and he clearly remembers how he overcame each of the issues Kevin is taking his sweet time over. Without realising it, he’s become good at something, he’s bookmarked future patterns on ravelry, he has a stash (a small one, but still a stash) and the needles Bee gave him live in a dedicated drawer in the old bureau in their apartment.

He goes to call Bee and realises her number isn’t in his “recently called” anymore and it breaks him a little bit; it’s been a while since he called her and he’s suddenly scared to. He’s never cried down the phone to anyone before, and he has to shove the phone at Neil when he finds him because he just vivisected himself for Bee and he doesn’t have the energy to do it again.

He doesn’t forget anything, he can't, but somehow he forgot about Bee, the person who cared about him enough to _teach him how to care_. It feels like betrayal, and it's a feeling that sits sourly in Andrew's mouth. Bee offers to set up a standing lunch with him, so once a month, he treats her to somewhere nice.

He doesn’t think about the way Kevin and Abby do the same thing, or Matt and his mum, or Renee and Stephanie.


	2. A Family Trait

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: studies have shown if you're afraid during sleep paralysis, it makes it last longer  
nobody's really sure why

Sleep paralysis is a family trait.

Aaron gets the weight-on-his-chest, seeing monsters kind of paralysis. It gets worse when he's going through withdrawal and Nicky genuinely worries after he's clean that he's going to have a heart attack from not sleeping.

Andrew's are quiet, he doesn't hallucinate like his brother, but he gets that awful creeping sensation of Something Is There. Usually right behind his door. Given how bedrooms have played a part to some real living nightmares for Andrew, this fucks with him pretty badly. Locking his door is a small reassurance because it'll stop most people but there's always the terror that whatever he's hiding from in his dreams might not be stopped by a locked door.

So Aaron is forced to face his demons and Andrew goes to bed in fear of all the things that lurk behind his door. I'm not 100% sure if Andrew's memory would extend to dreams, which aren't stored the way real memories are, but either way, Tilda isn't teaching Aaron what his worst nightmares mean, and medical textbooks only vaguely gloss over sleep disorders. Andrew chalks his up to trauma and lets them hit him the way everything else does.

It's not until Nicky that they realise what's happening, because it runs in the Hemmick gene as well as the Minyard one. Nicky probably knows because his grandma has them or something, but I wouldn't be surprised if Luther had twisted them into a punishment for being who he is. It probably took going to Germany for Nicky to find out what they were.

So they live with Nicky, and after the first few times Aaron doesn't sleep, or Andrew barricades his room, Nicky clicks. He helps Aaron plan out his caffeine better, and he buys the kit to install proper locks on Andrew's bedroom door, and goes as far as to fit the door with draft excluders, so that when Andrew wakes up, he won't be spooked by shadows outside his door if someone is still up and about.

Then they go to PSU and everything goes out of the window.

Aaron is a med student and needs to stay awake, so his caffeine levels and his sleep go to shit.

Andrew is sharing a room and the medication he's on only does so much to rein in that territorial, fearful thing under his skin that remembers the way his nightmares make him feel in perfect clarity.

Kevin is, weirdly, Aaron's saviour here. He's got a million different recipes for ridiculous health foods, and some of them are awful enough that they perk Aaron up before early lectures. He cuts out his morning coffee, in favour of a shot of whatever shit Kevin's blitzing at fuck-o-clock in the morning.

The visceral disgust works as a good stimulant, and it keeps Kevin off his ass when he orders pizza.

Andrew keeps powering on, ignoring the problem because he's still reluctant to admit that it's a problem. Nicky has learned not to say anything when they go home and Andrew curls up in his own bed in his locked, private bedroom and sleeps for hours in the middle of the day.

Neil-and-Andrew is a relief to Nicky; because Neil grounds Andrew when they're together at PSU. The way Andrew sleeps, the moment his eyes open in a nightmare, he can see nothing but Neil.

It's not always enough, but knowing Neil would wake in a heartbeat, would defend Andrew no matter what or who came through that door, is better than hiding behind a latch and praying it'll hold against the ghosts that Andrew is afraid are skulking behind it.

Of course, Andrew graduates before Neil. He tries to put it off, but he can't repeat a year without his scholarship being dropped.

So Andrew gets signed to a professional team and it's his shittiest year to date.

In the off season, he gives up and goes back to the house in Columbia, locks his bedroom door and curls up in the bed Nicky made safe for him when he was a teenager because at this point he's out of coping mechanisms.

Aaron has adopted a diet and caffeine/sleep schedule that work for him, and that feels like salt in Andrew's wounds. Nicky has always had a handle on his (he gets a less severe combination of the two, but he's found his own methods of coping and he's far more chill than either of the twins).

So Andrew is the one who's fallen behind, who can't cope. And he's furious about it, because he's rarely ever bad at things.

(With a perfect memory and a body made of dense muscle, the only thing Andrew can accept he won't ever enjoy is running, because it's fucking stupid. That makes him feel better at sucking at it.)

The idea that he can't deal with this, can't even hope to manage it or fight it with Betsy's help, is killing him. <strike>So is not being able to fall asleep beside Neil, but he doesn't want to think about that, so he doesn't.</strike>

Missing people or feelings isn't something Andrew is particularly used to. He doesn't like it.

The year passes, Neil graduates. They're not signed to the same team, but they're close enough, and Andrew is fucking tired.

They make it work; they spend the weekends together at least.

The one catch: they can't fit a lock on the bedroom door.

Either the door doesn't fit the frame right or the landlord says no, they can't lock the door.

And the fucking cats keep pushing the door open in the middle of the night.

The first time Andrew experiences sleep paralysis while they're living together, he wakes Neil up by hyperventilating and making tiny noises. Going to sleep with the door closed and 'waking' with it opened, obscuring part of the room and leaving him exposed sends Andrew into a small anxiety down-spiral.

He doesn't sleep for three days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just because I feel like we need a happy ending; it doesn't get 100% better for Andrew, but he eventually listens to Neil and Nicky, and sees a doctor.  
The meds he's given don't feel like they help a ton, but combined with working on sleeping closer to Neil, and eventually sleeping curled against Neil's back, he gets the hang of bringing himself down from the terror.   
Then one day, far in the future, when they're of sports-retiring age (30s, 40s maybe) they're cleaning out their home (home now, not a rented apartment or house, they're settled and home together) and Neil's like "huh, your sleep meds are out of date...and they're still full?"  
They're not gone, but they don't rule Andrew's sleep anymore.  
The cats have taken over that responsibility.

**Author's Note:**

> As a follow-up to this: when Andrew and Neil get married, Neil waits at the altar and Bee walks Andrew down the aisle, and he thinks about the way 18 year old Andrew cringed at the thought of being around other people, never mind the concept of being “given away”.
> 
> This is kinda complete, in the sense that I have nothing more to add, but maybe I'll tweak it later. For now, I just wanted to get it up on the archive!


End file.
